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CLIMATE RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

Project Info

Strategic, targeted assets in the supply chain reduce origination risk and support margins throughout the cycle

Underpinning any successfull commodities operation is the ability to ‘buy well’. This means being well placed to ‘originate’ commodities by sourcing new supply at competitive prices, given the requirements of our long held customer relationships. Being strong in origination means having a significant presence on the ground, to support and manage relationships with producers. Another means of building the ability to ‘buy well’, is to have exposure and recourse to strategic, targeted assets in the supply chain. Such positions reduce supply risk to business models, and enable higher sustainable margins through any price cycle.
Project Info

The need for Climate Resilient Infrastructure

From Cyclone Ida in West Africa, to searing heatwaves in Europe, hurricane Dorian in the Caribbean, we are already paying a heavy economic cost for the consequences of climate change. Extreme weather patterns seem par for the course in any given recent, meaning catastrophic effects on infrastructure. However, to limit the considered impact to flattened homes, exchausted reservoirs or flooded villages is to ignore the consequences for wider humanity. Urbanisation, water demand, migration – all are effected by the direct physical risks to people, assets and infrastructure which prevailing climatic conditions are bringing to bear.

According to the Carbon Disclosure Project, there is over 1trn USD at risk over the next five years
Building Resilience

In recent times, there has been a groundswell in the environmental conscience of people, politicians and latterly investors – best witnessed by the urgency upon which now reducing greenhouse gas emissions is being addressed.

This is a very welcome development. However, such mitigation risks as yet have not addressed the need to invest heavily in climate resilient infrastructure – to reflect in our transport networks, accommodation and utilities. Californian wildfires were placed at the door of the Pacific Gas & Electric bankruptcy in the US – a bill that totalled billions of US Dollars.

Generally it is assumed infrastructure investments have an useful economic life of 30 years or more, so in building new power generation for example, it is not enough to consider weather patterns we are currently subject to, but a trenchant need to anticipate those of the coming decades. Without doing so, we will not be able to future and weather proof our communities. Unfortunately, it is often those low to middle income economies which are disproportionately hurt by power failures, flooding and droughts.
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